Who Is Cetera

Just as we stand behind you to help you pursue your financial dreams, we have teams standing behind us and supporting our business. These firms also strengthen our relationship by providing the resources we need to better serve you. We think it’s important for you to know who these partners are and why we have chosen to work with them.

Our Broker-Dealer: Cetera Financial Specialists

We are affiliated with Cetera Financial Specialists, one of the premier broker-dealers in the industry and part of the family of independently managed firms of Cetera Financial Group.® As a leading network of independent retail broker-dealers, Cetera Financial Group is focused on creating a new paradigm for how financial professionals and institutions help guide individuals and families toward pursuing financial well-being throughout their lives. Their unique Advice-Centric Experience® is designed to give us a more meaningful and transparent shared experience.

As our broker-dealer, Cetera Financial Specialists is responsible for executing trades on your behalf. Like all broker-dealers, it must undergo regular auditing, and is required to meet specific net capital requirements to ensure it can meet its obligations to investors like you. But their support for our relationship goes well beyond their function as trade executor.

The Independent Advantage

Our affiliation with an independent firm like Cetera Financial Specialists means that we are not held to a sales quota or tied to selling only proprietary products. We have the independence and freedom to offer the guidance and recommend the financial solutions that best suit your needs, ensuring your objectives are what drive all decisions. In addition, the network of people and resources we have access to helps us pursue your unique goals and vision for the future. The depth of support we receive covers areas such as wealth management solutions, technology, research, product due diligence, and industry insight, and is designed to help us make more informed decisions. We’re also given the regulatory supervision, guidance, and training to ensure that we are current on all regulatory changes and requirements—oversight that provides an added layer of protection for you.

Our Custodians: Pershing and Schwab

While a broker-dealer helps supervise and facilitate the trading that converts your cash into invested assets, those assets are actually held by a custodian. Cetera Financial Specialists works with two custodians. Pershing LLC custodies individual retirement accounts (IRAs) to ensure they meet Internal Revenue Code requirements for tax deferral. Pershing and Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. custody brokerage accounts (including the brokerage accounts within IRAs) and fulfill a legal responsibility for safeguarding your assets while also providing related administrative services on your behalf, including settlement of purchases, tax and account recordkeeping, monthly statements, confidentiality, data integrity protections, and more.

Pershing is a subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, which is the nation’s oldest continuously operating bank and one of the world’s leading providers of securities services. Schwab has more than 20 years of experience serving independent investment professionals and was a pioneer in the business of serving them and their clients. Like Cetera Financial Specialists, Pershing and Schwab have to meet certain net capital requirements and are subject to regular audits, both internally and by independent firms, to ensure the appropriate handling, segregation, and protection of investors’ assets.

My Most Important Connection Is with You

While Cetera Financial Specialists, Cetera Financial Group, Pershing, and Schwab play important roles in our day-to-day servicing of your needs, the most important relationship we have is undoubtedly with you—and each of these firms model their services based on that fact. In short, that is the greatest value of our affiliation with an independent firm like Cetera Financial Specialists: We work with them to make it easier for us to work for you.

Anytime you would like more information about Cetera Financial Specialists, Cetera Financial Group, Pershing, or Schwab, please do not hesitate to ask. We want you to feel confident that you understand, to your satisfaction, how we work with and through these firms, why we have chosen to work with Cetera Financial Specialists, and the absolute priority both Cetera Financial Specialists and we place on our relationship with you. 

How Cetera Financial Specialists Helps Us

Among the many benefits we receive from affiliating with Cetera Financial Specialists are:

• The clarity and transparency of the innovative Advice-Centric Experience®
• State-of-the-art tools and technology to help build your wealth, plan your legacy and pursue your financial goals
• Diverse product choice that delivers the freedom to select financial solutions that best suit your needs and objectives
• Regulatory supervision, guidance, and training to ensure the most up-to-date information on regulatory changes and requirements to help protect you and your investments
• Access to a network of people, services and support that allows us to focus more time on you and your interests

How Cetera Financial Specialists Helps to Protect You

My affiliation with Cetera Financial Specialists means that:

• We are registered as a general or limited securities financial professional, which allows us to offer investment products, and requires: Examinations, Ongoing continuing education, Background and fingerprint checks
• We must be registered by Cetera Financial Specialists within each state we conduct business
• We are subject to credit checks conducted by Cetera Financial Specialists to ensure a history of financial responsibility
• Our business is subject to regular auditing
• We must attend an annual compliance meeting to ensure knowledge about any changes in the regulatory environment

While Cetera may be a new name to you, over the past 30 years its family of companies has grown to manage over $221 billion in client assets, delivering innovative advisory products and solutions and sophisticated trading and technology platforms to us and approximately 7,500 other financial professionals across all 50 states. And they have achieved that growth by setting the standard in professional ethics and compliance oversight. It is one of the most important reasons we have chosen to affiliate with them. Us and every financial professional who affiliates with them must meet and continuously adhere to their strict policies and culture of risk management. In addition, every investment we recommend has been rigorously reviewed and then approved by the industry experts of their research and due diligence teams. While this doesn’t remove the normal risks associated with investing, it does ensure that the investments represent legitimate opportunities, are based on well-understood economic models, and carry strong economic merit within the current market.

For more information, please contact us at (847) 256-8355